Low Country Blues

Bring Allman back to the studio!

After Tom Dowd’s passing away, the chances that the legendary bluesman Gregg Allman would ever come back to the studio dropped overnight. For many years, Gregg Allman and his band The Allman Brothers Band cooperated exclusively with Dowd, always staying satisfied. Gregg, when he started his solo career, preferred to work with this man too. Who managed to persuade him to get down to another album without the old friend and reliable partner around? This man is a producer who is hardly less deserved than Dowd himself, T Bone Brunette. Ten-Grammy winner, he made Gregg an offer he could not refuse. The maestro of the American folk music and his new producer look through hundreds of songs to pick up a dozen to work with for the first studio long player by Gregg Allman in 14 years. The musician, inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame many years ago, delivered this album to the market early 2011 under the title Low Country Blues.

Classic blues in the Southern way

Low Country is a name to a part of Georgia, a state in the Southern part of the United States of America. The selection of this particular area has for all the right reasons. Blues has always been dearly loved there and Georgia is the place where Gregg has been residing for several years now. The CD features songs of those outstanding performers whose music inspired Allman to write his own stuff. Grateful to them, Gregg resorted to the most recognized way in the present music business to pay his respect, making covers. No doubt, still possessing that famous distinguished Southern accent of his, still playing organ he never parted with, Gregg did something more than just redoing these songs. He virtually created new material based on the old. Low Country Blues is a chest of wonders where one can find items from different decades and even epochs. The earliest original verses appeared at the dawn of the previous century, like Floating Bride, and Devil Got My Woman. Some of them can hardly be associated with the Southern blues tradition, including the Chicago school influenced I Can’t Be Satisfied, and the West-born My Love Is Your Love. In the meantime, sung and played by Allman, they all turn into genuinely Southern blues.

If only he felt good

Originally, the release of Low Country Blues was due in the mid 2010, but the health issues stood in Allman’s way to what he planned to do. His long-termed relations with alcohol ended in critical condition, which urged transplantation of his lever. Gregg was lucky enough to undergo this procedure free of complications, and the album was released with only a short-time delay. It leaves us a spacious field for speculation whether this record is only a beginning of the cooperation between Allman and Brunette, or if it’s just an episode with only silence after. Being fascinated by the stage life, Gregg Allman can easily afford to leave the studio for several more years. Those well familiar with the career of this famous blues musician, will effortlessly notice the withering of the old man’s voice that has got considerably lower on Low Country Blues. Впрочем. Despite all the difference, it fits this music like nothing else. That would be great to hear some more new albums from Allman. However, even now this man has achieved so much, that we have not right to demand of him anything else.